Monday, November 06, 2017

Book Report: Columbine

I was dreading this book, figuring it would be a depressing and agonizing experience. Cullen neutralizes those concerns with magical storytelling coupled with exhaustive research. He explores the shooting from every conceivable angle, tracking down witnesses, obscure media reports and evidence.

His goal is to dispel myths about the shooting, such as the assumption that the killers were bullied loners who targeted jocks. He instead reveals that they were a codependent, psychopathic duo who fueled one another to abandon lives of relative privilege and moderate popularity to lash out at society in a misguided, mentally ill explosion of teen angst. Cullen forces you to recast your perspective on the tragedy and revisit false presumptions society has clung to and built up over the years among the rubble of the most notorious of school shootings.